High end Duo or low end Quad core

[Sicknote]

Right now I'm running AutoGK 2.40 (old i know), right now i'm looking at buying some new bits and given i do a fair bit of encoding using AutoGK I was wondering if it would be best to go for higher end Duo core or lower end Quad.

I'll have somewhere between £100-£200 to spend, having done a bit of reading here i believe i will have to update my version of AutoGK which is not a problem but just want some advice on the hardware side of things, i suspect quad is the way to go but just to be 100% before i take the plunge.

I also do some work using DVD-RB with CCE as well.

:stupid:

TIA

[RunningSkittle]

<--Q6600 and never looking back.

[Atak_Snajpera]

I agree with above post! Mine runs at 3GHZ without problems. Stability tested in Prime95 MT.

[pitch.fr]

Q6600 all the way!

mine runs at 8*415, rock stable!

[Atak_Snajpera]

What temperature do you have during Prime95 MT test?

[RunningSkittle]

55c-52c-52c-52c
Q6600 @333*9

[dat720]

<= Q9550 This thing rocks!!!!

Go for quad for sure.... i wasn't so keen to spend as much as i did on the 9550 but a mate went to the effort of ordering one in for me (they are very hard to get in aus atm) so i just paid for it and i'm loving it!!!

[pitch.fr]

What temperature do you have during Prime95 MT test?
35C idle / 60C burn in Prime95 after 8H straight

VID 1.25V

[Atak_Snajpera]

Shit! I knew that something is wrong with my cooling system. In Prime I have ~90C! In x264 (second pass) I have about 75C. I have big fan taken from Quad core (penryn) extreme edition. I suppose radiator was not installed well.

[RunningSkittle]

What are you measuring temperatures with? 90c is WAY too hot, just about Tjmax for the q6600 (95c)

[Atak_Snajpera]

CoreTemp

[buzzqw]

intel sensors are simply BROKEN!

i had a q9300 and now a q9450, on different motherboard (always intel based: asus p5k pro and now asus p5k-e wifi) , with Vendetta 2 cooler (http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/cooling_products/ocz_vendetta_2_cpu_cooler )
the q9300 on heavy duty goes at max 60, the q9450 at max goes over 80C, BUT the cooler is only warm! (on both cpu)

i have asked at official asus reseller and sayed that is normal.. :mad: it's due to intel sensors not build for desktop but for notebook :confused:

BHH

[jeffy]

@buzzqw: the cooler is only warm, but you cannot touch the cores, the sensors (unless speaking about motherboard sensors) are measuring the temperature of the cores. CoreTemp/RealTemp give *estimated* values

http://www.heise-online.co.uk/news/IDF-Why-many-system-info-tools-give-incorrect-CPU-temperatures--/111384

[pitch.fr]

I use RealTemp with the lowest stable Vcore set in the BIOS(1.34V), one notch lower and it reboots after 15' of Prime95

[buzzqw]

@jeffy
(i run linux , Sidux ) actually sensors reveal 46C BUT i am at idle

that's actualy the cores's temp
Core 0: +57.0
Core 1: +52.0
Core 2: +55.0
Core 3: +53.0

outragenous highly, glad that coretemp (in linux kernel) show a "true" temperatures.. but even in that case.. 46C at idle is too much.
(the cooler installed well)

that's top (a similar task manager for linux)
top - 17:02:00 up 3 days, 8:40, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.06, 0.13
Tasks: 128 total, 1 running, 127 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 2.6%us, 1.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 95.8%id, 0.5%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st

.. intel should do better sensors

BHH

P.S. thanks for the link!

[RunningSkittle]

coretemp is not accurate for core2 processors. Use realtemp (more accurate, but not completely)
The DTS sensors are not broken, its just that intel does not release the offical TJmax (necessary to know temperature readings in *c) numbers for core2 processors.

The temperatures reported are not necessarily "estimated", its a delta between TJmax and Tcase. The only estimated part is TJmax, which is currently a unknown value.

More information than you probably want to know:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/221745-29-core-quad-temperature-guide

[Atak_Snajpera]

This is what I get after 10 min in prime
http://img186.imageshack.us/img186/4384/new1hk3.th.png (http://img186.imageshack.us/my.php?image=new1hk3.png)

my fan
http://forums.legitreviews.com/about12556.html

[RunningSkittle]

Looking at your temperatures. 5c to TJmax means its 5c from throttling. Yours cores are not even remotely even. Your HSF is definitely not seated properly, which is fairly common when using the intel pushpins. Get some new thermal paste, and re-seat your HSF.

[Atak_Snajpera]

cpu was installed two days ago. New paste was also placed. It seams that it is well seated. I checked those pushpins and I cannot push them more. Radiator is not moving.
BTW I hate those pushpins!!!! Totally sick! It is very hard to remove them as well!

[RunningSkittle]

It is not installed properly, just look at your temperatures.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

BTW I hate those pushpins!!!! Totally sick! It is very hard to remove them as well!

I must say that I had no problems with those Pushpins during installation and that they are much easier to use than the old clamps...

[saint-francis]

I never let my Q6600 get over 50 C. I got some simple water cooling so I could overclock it and keep temps down. Really the Q6600 is relatively cheap and overclocks very well. I see no reason not to get a 170$ Q6600 and 150$ cooling and overclock it to run faster than a Q9770. Much faster.

[burfadel]

What kind of thermal paste are you using? Too much thermal paste actually can act like an insulator between the cpu and heatsink, especially if its a cheaper, silicon or no brand name stuff!

Thermal paste is ideally very thin, just enough to fill in all the gaps in the contact surfaces (even shiny surfaces have microscopic pores) to increase contact. A new generation paste is by far thermally superior to the cheaper stuff, and also are better than the once favoured 'Artic Silver', which by today's standards isn't as thermally efficient and unlike the new gen pastes also conducts electricity, so you have to be very careful with it!

I'd say get some good thermal paste, I'm using OCZ freeze which is one of the better (not the best but close to) thermal paste. If you do change over your thermal paste, you have to make sure you perfectly clean all the old paste off both the cpu and heatsink.

You CANNOT tell the temperature of the cpu just by feeling the temp of the heatsink. If the contact between the heatsink and cpu isn't good, then of course the cpu will be hot and the heatsink only warm! There is no way of manually feeling the temperature of the cpu, it can only be done by sensors - there's more than one, so there is some kind of redundancy. If the CPU is that hot on more than one sensor then its definitely a cooling issue! Depending on software, bios etc etc, at high temperatures the CPU can throttle back, so you're probably not even running it at full speed when it gets hot.

[video_magic]

cpu was installed two days ago. New paste was also placed. It seams that it is well seated. I checked those pushpins and I cannot push them more. Radiator is not moving.
BTW I hate those pushpins!!!! Totally sick! It is very hard to remove them as well!

Do you know that you have to have the push-pins in 'lock' position before you push them down in? You have to push them down already locked.

From what I have read around a lot of people don't know that (myself included first time).

You don't turn them to lock after they have been pushed down.

[Atak_Snajpera]

Do you know that you have to have the push-pins in 'lock' position before you push them down in? You have to push them down already locked.
eeeeeeeeee hmmmmmmm ...... No I didn't know that LOL :)

[Atak_Snajpera]

Problem solved. I used default fan for 6600 and know I have 72-70-70-70 (3.2Ghz v1.2562). Default voltage was a little bit to low and I had crash in prime after 5 min.
BTW. Is it normal that first core is always about 2 degrees hotter that others?

UPDATE: I think I will stick with 3Ghz@ 1.2625 because I had few crashes in firefox and SideBar was also crashing (Prime running in background)

[dat720]

Can vary i guess, my Q9550 temps are much the same between core 0 1 and 3 and 2 is 1 degree lower usually, my previous E6300 (sigh) was strange, no mater what i did 3 different coolers 3 different types of paste, varying fan config's, core 1 would always be 5-6 degrees higher than core 0, all i could put it down to was a manufacturing fault.

[RunningSkittle]

those temps are still very very high

[Atak_Snajpera]

It is Prime's fault running in background :) I don't have fancy water cooling system but stock fan.

[RunningSkittle]

the xigmatek S1283 is like $25. My max temps are around 53c with the fan at 7v.

[noee]

I wonder what you guys think:

I use AutoMKV (love it) and I'm getting ready to encode my DVD collection (200 titles) and I'm thinking of getting a new machine or at least a new chip just for the encoding.

Right now, I have two AMD machines with a G2 Brisbane in each, both O/C'd to 3Ghz and I run a copy of AutoMKV on each.

Should I stick with this approach, or should I upgrade to a Phenom 9950 BE or should I get a new Intel setup for one of those quad-cores?

I guess it seems the cheapest approach would be to just get the 9950BE, but will I then be able to run two instances of AutoMKV(x264) on that machine and get better-than-K8 performance?

[buzzqw]

i can only said about running 2 instance of automkv: it's useless.
X264 will use all your cores at full load, there is no spare for another instance :)

BHH

[foxyshadis]

If x264 is your primary concern, a cheap X4 upgrade will be enormously faster than an X2. You can probably replace both with X4s for about what you'd pay for a whole new Intel setup, and it'd be simpler, but it's hard to tell if a C2Q+X2 would be overall better than X4+X4.